NEW YORK — Michelle Oba­ma deliv­ered a pas­sion­ate con­dem­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump dur­ing the open­ing night of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, declar­ing him “in over his head” and warn­ing that the nation’s mount­ing crises would only get worse if he’s reelect­ed over Joe Biden.

“Don­ald Trump is the wrong pres­i­dent for our coun­try,” she said. “He can­not meet this moment. He sim­ply can­not be who we need him to be for us.”

Trump pushed back Tues­day, taunt­ing on Twit­ter that some­one should explain to Mrs. Oba­ma that he wouldn’t be in the “beau­ti­ful White House” today if it “weren’t for the job done by her hus­band,” Pres­i­dent Barack Obama.

Trump end­ed with a sar­cas­tic thanks to Michelle Oba­ma for her “very kind words.”

The for­mer first lady, one of the nation’s most respect­ed women, was the head­lin­er at the first pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nat­ing con­ven­tion of the coro­n­avirus era. There was no cen­tral meet­ing place or cheer­ing throng dur­ing the all-vir­tu­al affair Mon­day night. But it was an oppor­tu­ni­ty for Democ­rats — and some Repub­li­cans — to ral­ly behind Biden, the party’s pres­i­den­tial nominee.

Bernie Sanders, the pro­gres­sive Ver­mont sen­a­tor who was Biden’s last stand­ing rival dur­ing the pri­ma­ry, encour­aged his loy­al sup­port­ers to vote for the for­mer vice pres­i­dent in Novem­ber, argu­ing the nation can’t sur­vive anoth­er four years of Trump. He notably backed Biden’s plan for tack­ling health care, one of their most sub­stan­tive dif­fer­ences in the past. Sanders backs a Medicare for All plan while Biden has called for expand­ing the cur­rent “Oba­macare” law.”

But it was Michelle Oba­ma, mak­ing her fourth con­ven­tion appear­ance, who once again deliv­ered an elec­tri­fy­ing moment. Wear­ing a neck­lace that said “vote,” she tapped into her endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty among Black vot­ers and col­lege edu­cat­ed sub­ur­ban women — vot­ers Biden will need to show up in force.

She issued a stark warn­ing to a coun­try already nav­i­gat­ing health and eco­nom­ic crises along with a reck­on­ing on racism.

“If you think things pos­si­bly can’t get worse, trust me, they can and they will if we don’t make a change in this elec­tion,” she said as she issued a call to action for the coali­tion of young and diverse vot­ers who twice sent her fam­i­ly to the White House.

Biden will for­mal­ly accept the nom­i­na­tion on Thurs­day near his home in Wilm­ing­ton, Delaware. His run­ning mate, Cal­i­for­nia Sen. Kamala Har­ris, who is the first Black woman on a nation­al tick­et, speaks Wednes­day night.

Lead­ing up to that, Biden sought on open­ing night to demon­strate the broad ide­o­log­i­cal range of his supporters.

On the same night he was praised by Sanders, a self-described demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist who cham­pi­oned a mul­ti­tril­lion-dol­lar uni­ver­sal health care plan, Biden also won back­ing from Ohio’s for­mer Repub­li­can Gov. John Kasich, an anti-abor­tion con­ser­v­a­tive who spent decades fight­ing to cut gov­ern­ment spending.

“My friends, I say to you, and to every­one who sup­port­ed oth­er can­di­dates in this pri­ma­ry and to those who may have vot­ed for Don­ald Trump in the last elec­tion: The future of our democ­ra­cy is at stake. The future of our econ­o­my is at stake. The future of our plan­et is at stake,” Sanders said as he endorsed Biden’s health care plan.

Still, there were real ques­tions about whether the prime-time event would ade­quate­ly ener­gize the dis­parate fac­tions Biden hopes to capture.

Repub­li­cans face a sim­i­lar chal­lenge next week.

Trump sought to under­mine the Democ­rats’ big night by host­ing a polit­i­cal ral­ly in Wis­con­sin, where Biden’s par­ty had orig­i­nal­ly planned this week’s con­ven­tion. He called the Democ­rats’ event “a snooze” before it even began.

Monday’s speech­es were framed by emo­tion­al appear­ances from aver­age Amer­i­cans touched by the crises that have explod­ed on Trump’s .

Philonise and Rod­ney Floyd led a moment of silence in hon­or of their broth­er, George Floyd, the Min­neso­ta man whose death while in police cus­tody sparked a nation­al moment of awak­en­ing on racial injustice.

“George should be alive today,” Philonise Floyd said matter-of-factly.

Also speak­ing was Kristin Urquiza, an Ari­zona woman who lost her father to COVID-19, which has killed more than 170,000 peo­ple in the Unit­ed States.

“My dad was a healthy 65-year-old,” she said. “His only pre­ex­ist­ing con­di­tion was trust­ing Don­ald Trump, and for that, he paid with his life.”

And Rick Telesz, a Penn­syl­va­nia farmer, warned that Trump’s trade war has had a “tru­ly a dev­as­tat­ing effect” on his farm before the coro­n­avirus brought anoth­er blow with what he called “mis­in­for­ma­tion” com­ing from the country’s leadership.

“My biggest con­cern is that if these trends con­tin­ue with this type of lead­er­ship, I will be the last gen­er­a­tion farm­ing this farm,” he said.

Democ­rats aban­doned their plans for an in-per­son gath­er­ing in Mil­wau­kee because of the pan­dem­ic. The unprece­dent­ed gath­er­ing is not only test­ing the bonds of the diverse Biden-Har­ris coali­tion but the prac­ti­cal chal­lenges of run­ning a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in the midst of a pandemic.

At this moment, Biden sits in a stronger polit­i­cal posi­tion than Trump, who has strug­gled to expand his polit­i­cal coali­tion under the weight of his tur­bu­lent lead­er­ship and pro­longed health and eco­nom­ic crises. But 77 days before votes are count­ed, his­to­ry is not on the Demo­c­ra­t­ic challenger’s side. Just one incum­bent pres­i­dent has been defeat­ed in the last four decades.

Polls also sug­gest that Biden, a 77-year-old life­long politi­cian, is on the wrong end of an enthu­si­asm gap. His sup­port­ers con­sis­tent­ly say they’re moti­vat­ed more by oppo­si­tion to Trump, who is 74, than excite­ment about Biden. Democ­rats hope to shift that dynam­ic begin­ning with the convention.

Mrs. Oba­ma, whom Gallup deter­mined was the nation’s most admired woman last year, wowed Democ­rats at the 2016 pres­i­den­tial con­ven­tion by coin­ing the phrase: “When they go low, we go high.” She insist­ed on Mon­day she was not aban­don­ing that tack, explain­ing that tak­ing the high road doesn’t mean stay­ing silent.

With no live audi­ence for any of the speak­ers, con­ven­tion orga­niz­ers were forced to get cre­ative in their high-stakes quest to gen­er­ate enthu­si­asm. There were live appear­ances from speak­ers in Texas, South Car­oli­na, Wis­con­sin and Michi­gan, but many of the speech­es that aired Mon­day night were prerecorded.

Seek­ing to inject some fam­i­ly fun into an oth­er­wise seri­ous two-hour video mon­tage, the cam­paign host­ed dri­ve-in view­ing sta­tions in six states, much like dri­ve-in movies, where view­ers could on a big screen from the safe­ty of their vehi­cles. There were also many online par­ties fea­tur­ing celebri­ties and elect­ed offi­cials to make the expe­ri­ence more interactive.

It was unclear how many peo­ple attend­ed the par­ties. In most, only the speak­ers were vis­i­ble on screen. In one par­ty, Wash­ing­ton Rep. Prami­la Jaya­pal and Mass­a­chu­setts Sen. Eliz­a­beth War­ren ral­lied pro­gres­sives, many of whom had pre­ferred Sanders over Biden.

“We must do every­thing we can to ener­gize and excite our base about the choice before us,” Jaya­pal said

The Mon­day speak­ers includ­ed plen­ty of Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cians: Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Car­oli­na, who is the high­est rank­ing African Amer­i­can in Con­gress; New York Gov. Andrew Cuo­mo; Michi­gan Gov. Gretchen Whit­mer; Alaba­ma Sen. Doug Jones; Neva­da Sen. Cather­ine Cortez Mas­to and two for­mer pres­i­den­tial con­tenders: Min­neso­ta Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Sanders.

Beyond Kasich, oth­er Repub­li­cans back­ing Biden got speak­ing slots: Cal­i­for­nia busi­ness­woman Meg Whit­man, for­mer New Jer­sey Gov. Chris­tine Whit­man and for­mer New York con­gress­woman Susan Molinari.

It was impos­si­ble to ful­ly gauge America’s inter­est in the all-vir­tu­al for­mat on the first night. Broad­cast TV net­works are show­ing the final hour each night live, cable news is show­ing both hours and many view­ers plan to stream from the rivals’ web­sites or on social media.

Trump, as he often does, was ensur­ing he’d be a part of the conversation.

The Repub­li­can pres­i­dent made two swing-state cam­paign appear­ances on Mon­day, first in Min­neso­ta and then in Wisconsin.

“The only way we’re going to lose this elec­tion is if the elec­tion is rigged,” Trump said in Wis­con­sin, rais­ing anew with no evi­dence the specter of sig­nif­i­cant vot­ing fraud.